The Paleo Diet for Athletes (28 page)

From our analyses of 229 hunter-gatherer diets and the nutrient content of wild plants and animals, our research team has demonstrated that the most representative fat intake would have varied from 28 to 57 percent of total calories. To reduce risk of heart disease, the American Heart Association and the USDA MyPlate recommend limiting total fat to 30 percent or less of daily calories. On the surface, it would appear that, except for the extreme lower range, there would be too much fat in the typical hunter-gatherer diet—at least according to what we (the American public) have heard for decades: Get the fat out of your diet! The USDA’s MyPlate cautions us to cut out as much saturated fat as possible and replace it with grains and carbohydrate. Not only is this message misguided; it is flat-out wrong. Recent meta-analyses have shown that when used to replace saturated fats, carbs increased the risk for heart disease by elevating blood triglycerides and lowering HDL cholesterol levels. More important, these meta-analyses demonstrated that, compared with carbs, saturated fats were neutral and neither increased nor decreased the risk for heart disease.

Now let’s get back to the fat content of our ancestral hunter-gatherers’ diet. They frequently ate more fat than we do, but they also ate lots of healthy fats. Using computerized dietary analyses of the wild plant and
animal foods, our research team has shown that the usual fat breakdown in hunter-gatherer diets was 55 to 65 percent monounsaturated fat, 20 to 25 percent polyunsaturated fat (with an omega-6-to-omega-3 ratio of 2:1), and 10 to 15 percent saturated fat (about half being the neutral stearic acid). This balance of fats is exactly what you will get when you follow our dietary recommendations.

FOODS NOT ON THE PALEOLITHIC MENU

Let’s get down to the specifics of the diet.
Table 9.4
includes an inventory of modern foods that should be avoided. These recommendations might at first seem like a huge laundry list, with seemingly needless elimination of entire food groups. Most dyed-in-the-wool nutritionists wouldn’t object to our advice to cut down or eliminate sugars and highly refined, processed foods. They would have no problem with our suggestions to reduce trans fats and salt, and they would be ecstatic about our recommendations to boost fresh fruit and vegetable consumption. But they would, guaranteed, react violently to the mere thought of eliminating “sacred” whole grains from your diet. If they heard we also advocate reducing or eliminating dairy products, they almost certainly would brand this diet unhealthful, if not outright dangerous. You may wonder why, just because hunter-gatherers did not regularly eat grains or dairy products, you should follow suit. After all, aren’t whole grains healthful, and isn’t milk good for everybody? How can you get calcium without dairy? And won’t eating a lot of meat increase blood cholesterol levels?

In science, decisions should be made based upon what the data tell us and not upon human bias and prejudice. With these ground rules in mind, let’s take a look at the reasons for and potential benefits of eliminating or severely restricting entire food groups with the Paleo Diet for Athletes. One of the major goals of any diet, for both athletes and nonathletes alike, is to supply you, the consumer, with a diet rich in nutrients (vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals) that promote good health, which in turn promotes good performance.
Table 9.5
shows the nutrient density of seven food groups.

TABLE 9.4

Modern Foods to Avoid

DAIRY FOODS

Milk

Cheese

Butter

Cream

Yogurt

Ice cream

Ice milk

Frozen yogurt

Powdered milk

Nonfat creamer

Dairy spreads

All processed foods made with dairy products

CEREAL GRAINS

Wheat (bread, rolls, muffins, noodles, crackers, cookies, cake, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles, pasta, tortillas, pizza, pita bread, flat bread, and all processed foods made with wheat or wheat flour)

Rye (bread, crackers, and all processed foods made with rye)

Barley (soup, bread, and all processed foods made with barley)

Oats (instant oatmeal, rolled oats, and all processed foods made with oats)

Corn (corn on the cob, corn tortillas, cornstarch, corn syrup)

Rice (including brown, white, wild, and basmati; ramen and rice noodles; rice cakes; rice flour; and all processed foods made with rice)

Millet

Sorghum

CEREAL GRAINS-LIKE SEEDS

Amaranth

Chia seeds

Quinoa

Buckwheat

LEGUMES

All beans (kidney, pinto, navy, white, lima, black, and broad beans) including string beans

Lentils

Peas, snow peas

Peanuts (peanuts are legumes, not nuts)

Soybeans and all soybean products

Chickpeas and garbanzo beans

STARCHY TUBERS

Potatoes

Cassava roots

YEAST-CONTAINING FOODS

Breads, doughnuts, rolls, muffins

All fermented foods (beer, wine, pickled foods, foods containing vinegar, and tofu)

PROCESSED AND CANNED MEATS AND FISH

Sausages, bacon

Processed meats (lunch meats, deli meats, preserved or smoked meats such as ham and turkey, and smoked or dried and salted fish)

Canned or pickled meats and fish (tuna, sardines, herrings, smoked oysters and clams, canned salmon and mackerel, chicken, and beef)

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

All alcoholic beverages (permitted in moderation; see
Chapter 11
)

SWEETS

All candy

Honey

Dried fruit (permitted in moderation; see
Chapter 11
)

Note that these foods are not forever banned from your diet, but are to be regularly avoided; see
Chapter 11
.

From top to bottom, here’s the ranking of the most nutritious food groups: fresh vegetables, seafood, lean meats, fresh fruits, whole grains and milk (tied for second to last), and nuts and seeds. Why in the world would the USDA include grains in MyPlate if the goal is an adequate intake of vitamins and minerals? This strategy makes no sense for the average American, much less for athletes like you. Had we included refined grains in the list, they would have ended up dead last because the refining process strips this nutrient-poor food group even further of vitamins and minerals. Unfortunately, in the United States, 85 percent of the grains we eat are highly refined, and grains typically make up 24 percent of our daily calories.

Grains and dairy foods are not only poor sources of vitamins and minerals; they also retain nutritional characteristics that clearly are not in your best interest, whether you’re an athlete or not. From Chapter 5, you now know all about the glycemic index and acid-base balance in foods, along with how they impact your performance. Virtually all refined grains and grain products yield high glycemic loads. Further, all grains, whether whole or refined, are net acid-producing. Dairy products are one of the greatest risk factors for heart disease in the American diet, and cheeses produce the highest acidic loads of any foods. If that’s not bad enough, recent studies have found that dairy products, despite having low glycemic indices, spike blood insulin levels similar to the way white bread does and cause insulin resistance in children. Do yourself a favor—get the grains and dairy out of your diet and replace them with more healthful fruits, veggies, lean meats, and seafood.

If you, like most Americans, have been swayed by those milk mustache ads, you probably are part of the mass hysteria, largely generated by the dairy industry, suggesting there is a nationwide calcium shortage that underlies osteoporosis. Not true! Calcium intake from dairy, or any other food, is only part of the story behind bone mineral health. More important is calcium balance, the difference between how much calcium goes into your body from diet and how much leaves in urine. You will be out of balance if more calcium leaves than what comes in, no matter how much milk you drink. What we really need to pay attention to is the other side of the equation—the calcium leaving our bodies. Dietary acid-base balance is the single most important factor influencing calcium loss in the urine. Net acid-producing diets overloaded with grains, cheeses, and salty processed foods increase urinary calcium losses, whereas the Paleo Diet for Athletes is rich in alkaline-yielding fruit and vegetables that bring us back into calcium balance and promote bone mineral health.

TABLE 9.5

Nutrient Density for Various Food Groups (100 kilocalorie samples)

Superscripts represent relative ranking per nutrient (7 = highest; 1 = lowest).

Nutrient values represent average of food types within each food group: 8 whole grains, 20 fruits, 18 vegetables, 20 types of seafood, 4 lean meats, 10 seeds and nuts. Food types within food groups were based upon the most commonly consumed foods in the US diet for the 13 vitamins and minerals most frequently lacking or deficient in the US diet.

DIETARY STAPLES: MEATS

With the Paleo Diet for Athletes, you’ll be eating fresh meat and seafood, and lots of it, at almost every meal. Consequently, your protein intake will rise significantly. This is a good thing.

Experiments by Bernard Wolfe, MD, at the University of Western Ontario, have decisively shown that when animal protein replaces dietary saturated fat, it is more effective in lowering blood cholesterol and improving blood chemistry than are carbohydrates. In nutritional interventions such as Dr. Wolfe’s, the key to scientific credibility is replication—replication, replication, replication! It is absolutely essential that other scientists get similar results from comparable experiments. To the surprise of some party-line nutritionists, a series of papers from independent researchers around the world confirmed Dr. Wolfe’s earlier work.

Is there a limit to a good thing? You now know that lean animal protein lowers your blood LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, increases HDL (good), and provides muscle-building branched-chain amino acids. How much protein should—or can—you eat?

There is a limit to the amount of protein you can physiologically tolerate. Nineteenth- and 20th-century explorers, frontiersmen, and trappers who were forced to eat nothing but the fat-drained flesh of wild
game in late winter or early spring developed nausea, diarrhea, and lethargy and eventually died. Studies conducted in the laboratory of Daniel Rudman, MD, at Emory University, have examined the causal mechanisms underlying the protein ceiling and found that toxicity occurs when the liver can’t eliminate nitrogen from the ingested protein fast enough. Nitrogen is normally excreted as urea in the urine and feces, but with protein toxicity, ammonia and excessive amino acids from protein degradation build up in the bloodstream and produce adverse symptoms.

For most people, the maximum dietary protein limit is between 200 and 300 grams per day, or about 30 to 40 percent of the normal daily caloric intake. On the Paleo Diet for Athletes, you will never have to worry about protein toxicity, as you will eat unlimited amounts of carbohydrates in the form of fruits and vegetables. Further, in the postexercise window, as fully explained in
Chapters 2
,
3
, and
4
, you will be encouraged to consume high glycemic, alkaline-yielding carbohydrates to fully replenish your glycogen stores.

From our analyses of hunter-gatherer diets and the nutrient content of wild plants and animals, our research team has shown that the protein intake in the average hunter-gatherer diet would have ranged from 19 to 35 percent of daily calories. Since the protein intake in the normal US diet is about 15 percent of daily energy, we recommend that for peak performance during Stage V of recovery (the period following short-term recovery, lasting until your next preexercise feeding), you boost your protein intake to between 25 and 30 percent of daily calories. At values higher than 30 percent of energy, some people may begin to experience symptoms indicative of the physiologic protein ceiling.